Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (4 page)

His voice comes out rough. “I’m not...under control.”

Doesn’t he understand? That is the point of this, to let go. I brush my fingers down his torso to his body’s most intimate places, and he groans.

He pulls my towel free. His hands skim my breasts, my waist, my hips. He is trembling with desire, his need answering my own. He lifts me and carries me to the bed, his body gliding against mine. I cling to him, amazed that my weight is nothing in his arms. His physical strength is exhilarating. When he lays me down, he hesitates again, trying to stop himself, so I hook my legs around him. His resistance crumbles.

He is more restrained in his movements than usual, not relaxed, not comfortable. He wants this, even needs it, but he doesn’t trust himself with it.

We both find some release, but it leaves neither of us content, and in the end I am left wanting something beyond what my body found. As I lie in Logan’s arms, I feel his tension behind me, the way he is unhappy with himself. His face presses into my hair, and he breathes deeply, forcefully. He’s trying to fight off what’s coming. I strain to stay awake because I, too, know what is coming.

But the day was too long, and I am too tired, and, in the end, I fail.

*     *     *

I wake during the night to find Logan gone. My guts twist. For all the time I spent under Belos’s control, I have never felt so powerless, so utterly helpless. Strange that love would teach that to me better than fear ever could.

I slide into the Drift and move through the castle, searching. My brief, foolish hope that he might simply have gone for a walk vanishes. I hover, tempted to search the city. I know what he’s doing, and I know he wants to be alone in it. Should I respect that? Is it my place to stop him, to tell him he can’t do as he chooses? Am I supposed to tell him what is and isn’t good for him?

When I spot Heborian in his tower room, I decide to let that distract me from these questions I cannot answer.

I step out of the Drift at the foot of the stairs. Heborian has taught me too well, and I easily undo his locks.

I pass into the tower’s outer room, where the cot’s rumpled bedding indicates interrupted sleep. Heborian has been spending most of his nights here.

A bluish Drift-light glows from the workroom, and I let my bare feet slap across the boards to announce my approach. Despite this, I find Heborian hunched over the broad table, engrossed in his notes. Papers and tools are spread around him in an arc. Dark hair curtains his face as he studies the notes, tossing one paper aside to scrutinize another. Bold but messy handwriting covers the page, though I can’t read any of it from here. His wrinkled shirt is unlaced, the cuffs rolled to his elbows to expose muscled forearms. A Runish tattoo curls around his right wrist and down his hand.

When I clear my throat, Heborian leaps to his feet. A Drift-sword flashes into his hand, then vanishes when he sees me. He glares. The blue tattoo hooking his right eye looks black and angry in the Drift-light.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I inquire.

Heborian thumps back onto his stool. “Apparently this castle is full of insomniacs. I assume Logan is...out?”

I keep my face still, but I grimace inwardly. Logan has done this enough to catch Heborian’s notice. But then, little escapes Heborian’s notice.

“What are you working on?”

Heborian eyes me, letting me know he’s noticed I won’t answer. “Plans. Ideas.”

I take a few steps into the room, scanning the notes and tools. Oddly, a harpoon launcher, salvaged from the whaling ship, is propped in a corner.

“Something I can help you with, Astarti?”

I shrug and rest a hip against the table. I’m only wearing a long tunic, which feels weird around my father, but I won’t let my discomfort show.

Heborian tidies his papers, pulling a few of them away from me. “Several of the whaling crew reported that a giant whale tried to attack their ship. They claimed the whale turned into a woman. Did you see the same thing?” Heborian looks at me over the stack of notes he’s squaring.

I saw her. I saw Logan stop her, and I also saw him touch her hand.

Heborian nods at my unspoken confirmation. “You didn’t think that was worth telling me?”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“We have one purpose right now, Astarti, and that is to understand our danger and prepare for it. Belos will come at us, we know this. It’s the gods I can’t anticipate. You must not withhold information. You must not put Logan ahead of the greater good.”

I let his words slide away from me, though they leave a cold, icy trail in their wake.

I say, “They’re not really gods, you know. I think, in this one thing, the Earthmakers are right. They’re the Old Ones, the first ones.”

Heborian huffs. “They made the world and they made us. What is a god if not the maker of life?”

I cock an eyebrow. “Is every father a god then?”

Heborian grunts. “If they are not gods, there is no such thing.”

“The Ibrisians seem to think there’s something more. The Divine Light.”

“Don’t you think they’re talking about the light of the Drift, whether they know it or not?”

“Maybe. But something made the Old Ones. They didn’t make themselves.”

“And how do you know that, Astarti? And if there is something greater even than the Old Ones, what is it? Why have we never seen it? The Old Ones—the gods—make more sense.”

“I don’t think you can put ‘god’ and ‘sense’ into the same sentence. The Old Ones are beyond us, yes, and I don’t claim to understand them, but I don’t like the term ‘god’ and don’t think it fits. It makes them sound untouchable, and they’re not. We’ve seen that.”

“Aren’t you just the little theologian today?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

Heborian sighs. He’s silent for a while, frowning at his notes. I feel a flash of pride—he’s thinking about what I said.

Suddenly, he asks, “Do you think Logan will try to join them? The Old Ones, if that’s what you want to call them.”

To hear Heborian state so bluntly what I fear makes my stomach flip. I say, forcing myself to believe it, “No.” Unfortunately, I can’t help adding, “Why do you ask that?”

Heborian leans an elbow on the table, more comfortable now that I am not. “His control is as thin as spring ice on a pond.”

“That’s not true, and what does that have to do with it anyway?”

Heborian, of course, doesn’t answer. If he answered, I could argue. If he says nothing, I’ll have to chew on his words. Bastard.

To get back at him, I snatch one of his papers from the stack. He grabs it back so fast it leaves a paper cut on my palm.

“What are you working on up here so secretively?”

Heborian sets the papers beyond my reach. “I have plans to create further bone weapons.”

His frankness surprises me. “Oh?”

“I need more bones. Now that Belos and his lot are out of the Dry Land, I can get to the Broken City.”

“And you want me to come? I can’t see why else you would have told me.”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

“Would it kill you to say you want my help?”

“Another Drifter would be useful, but it’s up to you. I can understand if you don’t want to go back there.”

I search his face for signs he’s using this to prod me, but I find instead a softening in his dark eyes. I look away. I would have preferred a prod.

“I’ll go.”

I read surprise in the stillness of Heborian’s body, which I see from the corner of my eye. He doesn’t ask for my reason, but I give it anyway.

“I want to see that fortress in rubble. I barely glimpsed it when Logan, Horik, and I fled the Dry Land. In my mind, it’s still standing. I want to change that.”

I feel Heborian studying me, and it makes heat creep up my neck. “What?”

“Sometimes I can scarcely believe you never knew your mother. You’re so much like her.”

I push away from the table. I don’t want to engage in this particular conversation. “When do you go?”

“In the morning.”

I turn for the door.

“And, Astarti? You are like her.”

I say gruffly, “Goodnight, Heborian.”

“Goodnight.”

I return to my and Logan’s rooms to find him still gone. I should sleep, store up my energy for tomorrow, but I can’t. I lie awake, listening for the door.

It opens at last, and Logan moves quietly through the room. When he lies down beside me, I catch the scent of all the angry back alleys of Tornelaine. I lie there stiffly, trying to decide whether to confront him. I know it won’t help, and, despite how tempting it may be at this moment, it won’t actually make me feel any better.

I roll over to him. His skin is overly warm and a little sticky. I smell the alcohol and sweat and blood. Even though it’s dark, I close my eyes as though I can shut it out.

Logan is tense, expecting me to say something. When I don’t, he lets out a slow, relieved breath. At the end of that breath, he passes out.

I lie against him for what seems hours. What he’s done to himself offers him only temporary relief, but it’s more powerful, apparently, than anything I can give him, and that bothers me. On a selfish level, it stings that I’m not enough. Silly, maybe, but there it is. What’s worse, what eats at my heart, is that he has to hurt himself to find peace.

If peace is even what this is.

Chapter 6

LOGAN

I WAKE ALONE.

I deserve it.

Morning light bleeds through the curtains to lie softly where Astarti’s body should be. I scrub a hand down my face, surprised by the sting and ache around my eye as my fingers pass over warm, swollen flesh. I hope it was still dark when she left.

I groan as I slide from the bed. Since I’m alone, I allow myself to clutch at my sore ribs. I explore them with my fingers. Nothing feels broken.

I know I shouldn’t do this. It’s stupid and pathetic. But I have to get back inside my skin, and this is the only way I know to do it. I have to force that fist to tighten inside me, to lock everything up.

If I don’t...

If I
don’t
...

I force the thought away.

I wash the stink of Tornelaine from my body. There’s a fist-sized bruise on my stomach. I can hide that from everyone’s eyes but Astarti’s, but the black eye will be harder. I don’t want anyone to say anything about it. I just want to quietly go back to being myself.

I dress quickly and go to find Bran. When he’s not in his rooms, I head for the library.

Light pours through the high, east-facing windows to fall in stripes across the maze of shelves. At my approach, the thin, pale librarian stands from his desk. He folds one hand over the other. One of the Ancorites used to use that deceptively quiet gesture. My skin is crawling by the time I reach him.

“May I help you?”

His voice is deep and very human. Some of the tension leaves my shoulders. He sounds nothing like the Ancorites.

He does, however, eye my bruised face.

“Is Branos here?”

“In the scroll room.”

Like I know where that is.

The librarian reads my annoyance. “I’ll take you.”

He leads me through the maze. We pass a mess of toppled shelves where frowning scholars carefully sort through the scattered books. One makes a sound of physical pain, and I spin to see what’s happened. The scholar shows his companion a book whose cover has been torn away, and they both shake their heads sadly. I picture the captain’s broken arm that my mother Healed. Better a book than an arm. Better an arm than a neck. Three men were killed on that ship yesterday. That no one was killed in the city is all but a miracle.

I follow my guide to the back of the library and a series of doors. One stands open, and the librarian gestures toward it.

I watch him walk away, one hand folded over the other in that nauseating way. My stomach heaves a little, and I taste the acidity of bile in the back of my throat.

“Is that you, Logan?” Bran calls from inside the room.

I swallow the horrible taste and go to the door. The room is dark, lit only by Bran’s glass-faced lantern.

“What’s with this room?” I grumble, letting out my agitation. “It’s like a tomb.”

Bran looks up from the scroll he’s been studying. The corners are weighted down with small felt bags filled with dry beans.

“Sunlight damages old scrolls.” He squints at me, then his mouth tightens. “By the Old Ones, Logan.”

“I need a favor.”

He groans.

I walk to Bran’s table. I know he’ll do this for me. “What’s the big deal? I just need you to go get Korinna.”

“It’s not fair to do this to her, you know. You’re asking her to hide something from Mother.”

I sit in the chair across from Bran. “Our mother doesn’t want to know. Do you want her to know?”

It’s the very reason I can’t go find Korinna myself; I don’t want to run into my mother. I can handle Bran’s irritation, but I don’t want to see my mother’s worry. I’ve worried her enough for a lifetime. Though I guess she got me back a little yesterday. When I looked for her to ask what she had been doing in the ocean, she was nowhere to be found.

Bran closes his eyes and exhales slowly. When he opens them, he studies me. “When are you going to stop this?”

I don’t answer.

“Do you know what this does to Astarti?”

I wince. The deadness I worked so hard to achieve last night fades like the lie it is. I fist my shaking hands in my lap so Bran won’t see.

With uncharacteristic ruthlessness, he plows on, “She came to see me this morning. Do you want to know what she asked me?”

Yes.

No.

I’m too conflicted to answer.

“She didn’t mention this”—he waves a finger to indicate my face—“but she asked me whether I thought you trusted her.”

My eyebrows contract. “Why would she ask that? Of course I trust her.”

“I don’t think she meant that kind of trust.” He eyes me. “Have you talked to her?”

“About what?” I growl, daring him.

He dares. “It’s only been a few days, Logan, and you’re trying to pretend you’re fine. You’re obviously not. I can see that, and so can Astarti.”

I make my voice a threat. “Drop it, Bran.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Just go get Korinna.”

“
Logan
—”

“
Bran
.”

“Logan. You have to find a better way to deal with this. You’re hurting yourself
and
her.”

Does this hurt her? She seems angry, but does it hurt her? I am only hurting myself, and I need it. Bran’s words fill me with doubt.

“She cares about you, Logan. She loves you. That’s why this hurts her. And it does hurt her, whether you see it or not, whether she admits it or not.”

I don’t want to hurt Astarti. By the earth and the sea and the wind and the sun, that is the last thing I want. My lungs seize. I can’t breathe.

Bran is beside me, though I didn’t see him get up. He lays his hand on the back of my neck like he used to do when I was a child. He gently pushes me down until my head is between my knees.

Three deep breaths. The first two are hard, but my lungs loosen on the last one.

“Again,” he says.

I do as he tells me, and then I’m better.

I am fine.

Bran takes his hand away, but I don’t sit up.

“I’ll go get Korinna,” he says but remains at my side. He waits for me to nod, to show him I’m through it, then he leaves. I let my head rest on the edge of the table.

By the time Bran returns with Korinna, I’ve managed to sit up.

I shift in my chair to take in Korinna’s appearance. She still has her tight blonde braid and still wears her green tunic and leather breeches, but the Warden’s vest is gone, as are her bracers. Bit by bit, they’re peeling away what she wanted to be and making her a Healer.

I see her gift. I’ve felt it. But it still bothers me to see her remade by someone else’s design.

“I’m sorry, Korinna,” I mutter, embarrassed now that she’s here.

“I don’t mind.”

Bran sits on the edge of the table while Korinna kneels by my chair.

“May I?” She raises her hands a little.

I don’t know if she’s just polite or if she’s afraid of me.

I lean forward, and she places her cool hands on my face. My skin warms as the bruise Heals.

“I’m sorry,” I say again as I sit back. “I know it’s a waste of your skills and energy.”  I only want it gone so no one asks me about it.

Bran says grimly, “Let’s see the rest of it.”

“There’s nothing more,” I lie.

I can’t bring myself to further abuse Korinna’s gift, even if it means Astarti will scowl every time I take my shirt off. I can handle that, but I cannot handle everyone staring at me all day with questions in their eyes.

The tension in Bran’s body tells me he knows I’m lying, so I change the subject, albeit awkwardly. “How is it going in the infirmary? Is Feluvas still butting heads with the king’s physician?”

Bran huffs annoyance, but Korinna grins, and for a moment I see her resemblance to Astarti, her cousin. A light version of Astarti’s dark.

“You should have heard them this morning. Did you know it’s possible to have a twenty minute debate about the properties of willow bark?”

I snort.

“The Prima smoothed it all over.”

“My mother, the peacekeeper.”

Korinna shrugs. “Someone has to be.”

“I don’t know. If Feluvas would just set the man’s pants on fire and teach him a lesson, that would probably solve it well enough.”

Korinna snickers at this mental image. “I’d better get back. They’ll wonder where I am.”

“Thanks. For this.”

She says seriously, “My service is my life, and I give it freely.”

She means it well, but the use of those traditional words, meant to signify a Warden’s dedication, fills me with shame. This is not a service I should have asked of her. Even so, I make myself nod. I won’t throw her dedication back in her face.

As she reaches the door, I call out, “Korinna?”

She pauses.

“You won’t...”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

When she’s gone, Bran settles into his chair once more. He clearly thinks I’ll leave without another word, and I normally would. When I don’t, he looks up.

I don’t want to voice the question rattling around inside me, so instead I ask, “What are you reading?”

“Early accounts of the Old Ones. They’re not firsthand. This one was written perhaps four hundred years after the binding.”

“Why are you reading that?”

“I want to understand them, Logan. I want to know what we have forgotten or ignored. Aron sees this as a battle like any other. Heborian is more interested in my research, but he only wants to know their weaknesses. I don’t think this will be that kind of battle. We need to learn all we can.” He pauses. “There are things I would like to ask you.”

He leaves this open, inviting but not pushing, but I can’t walk into it. I spent a long night disentangling myself from the Old Ones.

The momentary thinning of Bran’s lips reveals his frustration. “And this one”—he thumps a more modern book with his forefinger—“is about Belos’s war.” He notices my eyes lingering on the scroll. “But you’re more interested in this, aren’t you?”

I want to say, “no.” I need that fist to stay closed; I need to move on. Why am I still sitting here?

My question slips through my guard like a finger of wind. “Are there...names in that?”

“Names?”

My heart hammers a warning, but I persist. “Of the Old Ones.”

“No. Why?”

Relief wars with disappointment. “No reason.” I push up roughly from my chair, annoyed with myself.

“Logan?”

I can see he wants to say something, and I silently beg him not to. He sighs.

“Astarti is in Heborian’s study.”

When I reach the study, the guards open the double doors before I say anything. I’m not sure I like that they were expecting me.

The room is full of Drifters. The energy washes at me. I catch hints of every person’s energy, like a scent coming from a person’s clothes when they move. With Drifters, the effect is magnified, and right now it feels like I’m walking into a smoky room. Most of my adult life I’ve been able to shut this out, but ever since I started using my power again, it’s been coming at me more strongly, and I don’t like. The only one I don’t mind feeling is Astarti; I like sensing her near me. My eyes find her now, where she stands beside Horik’s huge form, and her pale blue eyes anchor me in this mess.

Heborian clears his throat to get my attention. I meet his impassive gaze.

“We’re planning a venture. We leave soon for the Dry Land and the Broken City to collect bones.”

A shiver passes through me at the mention of the Dry Land. I feel a phantom impression of scorching heat and blinding sun. I feel the black ooze of Belos’s will violating my mind and body. Because everyone is watching me, I clench all of this deep inside.

I lower my voice to steady it. “What do you want them for?”

“That’s my business. I will get them with or without you, but Astarti is going.”

I snarl, “You can’t make her.”

Astarti comes to my side. “He’s not making me.”

“Why would you want to set foot in that evil place?”

Heborian interrupts, “Logan, will you come?”

I can tell Astarti wants to protest, but she doesn’t embarrass me by doing it in front of everyone.

I don’t want to go back there. Icy water pools in my gut at the thought of it. But I’m not letting Astarti go to that place without me.

I glare at Heborian. “Yes.”

Astarti can’t hold back her protest any longer. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“If you’re going, I’m going.”

Her eyes harden. She definitely has something to say, and I doubt I’ll like it.

Heborian clears the room with a sharp, “In the courtyard, one hour.”